Sunday, January 24, 2010

As always, Dan Piraro nails a little piece of the zeitgeist (and the zeitgeist says "Autsch!").

Can I get a show of hands from those who feel pain whenever they hear the word "orientate"?

When I was 17 I had a boring summer job, and spent part of my time making a list of as many English words ending in "-ate" as I could think of. It was a substantial list, but orientate was not on it.

Writer Paul Niquette wrote a short essay on this "back-formation" of verbs when creating his list of 101 Words I Don't Use. He includes a list of other misguided back-formations (some I particularly liked were combinate, confrontate, explanate, hospitalizate, and observate). Unfortunately, a few on his list are ones I've actually heard with some frequency: administrate, destinate, documentate, fermentate, and prolongate.

When Niquette wrote his rumination in 2005, he concluded by saying, "Fastenate your seatbelt: The verb 'orientate' appears on the web at more than 1,600,000 sites." My current search, surprisingly, shows the number receding to 1,300,000 occurrences.

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Third of four daughters, raised in a rural area outside of a small town. Now living in a moderately large city, making media and immersed in other people's media. Finally cleaning out the filing cabinet and loading its contents to the cloud.